ARBERIAONLINE

"Moreover, you scorned our people, and compared the Albanese to sheep, and according to your custom think of us with insults. Nor have you shown yourself to have any knowledge of my race. Our elders were Epirotes, where this Pirro came from, whose force could scarcely support the Romans. This Pirro, who Taranto and many other places of Italy held back with armies. I do not have to speak for the Epiroti. They are very much stronger men than your Tarantini, a species of wet men who are born only to fish. If you want to say that Albania is part of Macedonia I would concede that a lot more of our ancestors were nobles who went as far as India under Alexander the Great and defeated all those peoples with incredible difficulty. From those men come these who you called sheep. But the nature of things is not changed. Why do your men run away in the faces of sheep?"

Letter from Skanderbeg to the Prince of Taranto ▬ Skanderbeg, October 31 1460

(GTranslate):
''Where was the old Caucasus? The surprising answer to this question is a classic antique Aeschylus. According to him, Prometheus advised transformed into a cow goddess Io go, from the Ionian Gulf to the east, to the nomadic Scythians, but not reach them, and continue to the sea. When he reached the river Hibrista, Io was to get around to it, going to the Caucasus, and then go down to the south. So she had to walk to the Cimmerian cape, which is wedged into a narrow sea channel. There she had to go boldly Meotidsky channel and get to Asia. According to the prediction of Prometheus, the path Io had to make an impression on people and keep them in mind as the name of the Bosphorus (the way of the cow). -- This story clearly puts the Caucasus near the Maritsa river, on the way from the Ionian Gulf to the Bosphorus. Attempts to interpret the Caucasus as a modern Mount Caucasus is obviously absurd.

But one could argue that perhaps the words of Aeschylus does not reflect the views of his day for a very simple reason: he simply made a mistake. After all, could it be that Aeschylus made a mistake, excusable for a poet, maybe he did not know the "geography of his day." In this case, however, it is difficult to imagine that such a mistake would have remained uncorrected in so famous (in ancient times) work. However, it does not matter. What is important is that for centuries after Aeschylus cultured people looked at the stage and read his "Prometheus," and from there they learned that there is a mountain in the Balkans, the Caucasus, near the Maritsa river, on the way from the Ionian Gulf to the Bosphorus. Apparently, as a result, for many of them was in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and it is a point of view found in other extant retelling of the myth of Io.
--------

We want to draw attention to the fact that the old writers, that our information about Scythia and Scythians. So Jordanes (historian of the 6th century) wrote that the Scythians or Scythia borders the land of the Albanians. Strabo (1st century BC and then c.) writes that the Caucasus Mountains, where they lived the Scythians, advocating land of Albanians (HI. IV.1). When traveling from Brindisi in Epidamn (Dyrrachium), leads to the Caucasus Mountains or Kerauniya(?). Armenian geographer Ananias Shirakatsi wrote that Vardanes or Vardar river springs from the Caucasus Mountains. Old authors therefore under the geographical concept Caucasus Mountains not understand, we call it, but one of the Dinaric mountain range, located in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula.

Herodotus, who has left us the oldest information about Hidden and Scythians also indicates the Balkans, Thrace, and Scythia. The campaign against the Persians in the Caucasus mountains of Scythia, were not directed to southern Russia, to Macedonia, Prespa Lake and the land of Buddhists or City Water. The most important rivers Likos (Lycos) and Var (War, Wardar), labeled by him as Scythian rivers. He writes that four of the Scythian rivers Likos, Vardar Tanais (Black) and Irgis (Virgis, Bregalnitsa) flowing along the lake Meotis.

From the above sources of Herodotus understood that the main Likos river flows near the River Vardar, therefore Troy was located in Thrace, and not in Asia, as wrongly stated. These facts give us the basis for a proper understanding of the ancient history of the Balkan peoples, as we will see later.

"In the Caucasus and Albanians live Iberia, Sarmatians, Scythians, and the Achaeans." This inevitably means that the Caucasus Mountains, home to the Scythians is close to Albania and Achaia (Greece).
--------

This same look and find in Procopius of Cesarea, author of important historical works of old, is a unique source of the events of antiquity. He wrote: "Some of the branches of the Caucasian mountains turned to the north and west, and reach up to (land) Illyrians and Thracians...". - And Illyria and Thrace were on the Balkan Peninsula.
---------

''Latin Caucasus, from Greek Καύκασος, said by Pliny ("Natural History," book six, chap. XVII) to be from a Scythian word similar to kroy-khasis, literally "(the mountain) ice-shining, white with snow." (?..)

i will really be thankful if some of you gave me the links of theses sources

I don't remember where I found those paragraphs, but as you can see arbanor the primary sources there, about some "Caucaus" mountain in Southeastern Europe, are the
Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, Geography of Strabo, some writings of Procopius of Cesarea and some of the armenian geographer Ananias of Shirak.